The idea of load balancing is well defined in the IT world: A network device accepts traffic on behalf ofa group of servers, and distributes that traffic according to load balancing algorithms and the availabilityof the services that the servers provide. From network administrators to server administrators to applicationdevelopers, this is a generally well understood concept.

The implementation of load balancing, however, is another matter. There are often many questionsregarding how load balancing is deployed, how the servers are configured, and how the overall networkarchitecture may need to change to accommodate load balancing appliances.